THE FORMER head of the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund yesterday confirmed receiving what are suspected to be blood diamonds from model Naomi Campbell in 1997 after a charity dinner in South Africa.
Jeremy Ractliffe, who is still a fund trustee, handed three precious stones over to police shortly after Campbell gave evidence to The Hague war crimes tribunal in the trial of former Liberian leader Charles Taylor.
“Three small uncut diamonds were given to me by Naomi Campbell on the Blue Train on 26th September 1997,” Ractliffe said in a statement.
Prosecutors at The Hague are trying to prove the former west African warlord traded in illegally mined diamonds to secure weapons for Sierra Leone’s RUF rebels during the 1990s.
Diamonds that are mined using inhumane practices, and which are sold by rebel groups or corrupt governments to buy weapons, are known as blood diamonds.
Yesterday morning the stones were sent to South Africa’s Diamond Board to be authenticated. Police said this process would also determine the possibility of an arrest for possession of uncut diamonds, which is illegal in South Africa without a licence.
On Thursday Campbell told the tribunal she was given the “dirty-looking stones” by two unidentified men who called to her room in the middle of the night after a charity dinner with Nelson Mandela.
She said she thought the diamonds were from Taylor, but she could not prove it.
Campbell said that the following morning, after recounting the incident to actor Mia Farrow and her assistant – who had also been dinner guests the previous evening, along with Taylor – she gave the stones to Mr Ractliffe and asked him to do something good with them.
Prosecutors subpoenaed Campbell to give evidence after Farrow released a statement about the incident.
Ractliffe confirmed the chain of events described by Campbell, but added he told her he would not involve the fund or Mr Mandela in anything illegal. He said he took and kept the uncut diamonds so Campbell would not get into trouble. “In the end I decided I should just keep them,” he said. Ractliffe added he would be happy to testify about what happened at The Hague.
Fund spokesman Oupa Ngwenya said the fund knew nothing about the diamonds until the revelations this week at The Hague.
“We are not in receipt of the diamonds and there is no record of diamonds in our possession at the Nelson Mandela [Children’s Fund],” said Ngwenya.